While most critics would probably say Slaughterhouse Five is his finest work, due to its compassionate plea for humanity (tinged of course with bleak determinism), it is God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater that is arguably Vonnegut’s most artistic novel.

The plot isn’t driven by narrative gimmicks in chronology, or philosophical aliens appearing deus ex machina, or accidents of history, but rather (largely) internally by what is his most cognitively and morally conflicted (but not totally amoral like Felix Hoenikker) and intriguing character (certainly more interesting than the semi-autobiographical and passive Billy Pilgrim).

Is this just a banal tale of undoing the harm of greed and loving others? I think no. Like Vonnegut’s other works, there is a tug of war between misanthropy and idealism, and the conclusion defies a conventional expectation of finding meaning. Like the endings to other Vonnegut novels, this presents merely one of a number of imagined alternatives to realizing one’s potential in the face of death.

Readings his meanings as a plurality of alternatives can also help us to resist the urge of labeling Vonnegut as just a ‘black humorist’. Whacky and absurd, definitely (he reminds me in this regard of the manic mind of Jarod Kintz), but God Bless You Mr. Rosewater is an example of how he does not simply display an absurd conclusion to us and encourage us to laugh at the inescapable fickleness of fate. This character actually changes and has an impact on those around him (though of course it must be admitted that the notion of someone changing the course of history if they try hard enough is one Vonnegut rightfully satirizes throughout much of his other work). This book is a testament to the fact that Vonnegut can’t be put in a box.

Perhaps most importantly, though, this book contains among his most finely crafted prose: “Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun”. Vonnegut once said in an interview that in high school he wrote for the daily newspaper, and the simple style he is often (derisively) described as adhering to was deliberately crafted to reach an audience of teenagers (and his detractors would say still does). But at his best, Vonnegut defies even his own self-descriptions, and from this sentence it is clear that he is capable of considerable complexity (though he is also capable of careless repetitiousness in a way that goes beyond simply his own tendency to cross-reference his works; compare this sentence with an inferior one in Breakfast of Champions: “Those fish were extinct. They had all turned belly-up years ago, had been flushed from the cave and into the Ohio River – to turn belly-up, to go bang in the noonday sun.”)